


Princess Lindworm

by heroboof



Category: Homestuck, Homestuck 2: Beyond Canon - Fandom
Genre: Boarding School, Bonus Update Compliant, Bullying, Canon Compliant (at time of posting), Gen, Norwegian Mythology, Yiffany Angst i guess, anon hate, mentioned slutshaming, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23998666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heroboof/pseuds/heroboof
Summary: Yiffany, through the years.Not a happy fic.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Jade Harley (mentioned), Rose Lalonde/Jade Harley (mentioned), Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam (mentioned)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 71





	Princess Lindworm

The story goes like this:   
  
Once upon a time, a fine young King was married to a fine young Queen and they were both very happy, except for the fact that they had no children. The King was not bothered by this, though it saddened the Queen greatly. She sought help from the greatest sorceress she knew, having not told the King, and the sorceress gave her two fruits.    
“Peel them,” she said, “eat them, and bury the pit under a rosebush. But be careful not to eat the peel.”    
So the Queen brought the fruits home, careful not to drop either, peeled one and ate it, and it was so sweet and delicious that she forgot the sorceress’ warnings and ate the second fruit with the peel on. Surely, she thought, it would be alright, and buried both pits. 

A few months later, she found under the rosebush a beautiful baby girl and a hideous beast, a Lindworm. Disgusted and horrified, she ordered the Lindworm to be hidden in a tower, far away from all the world, where no-one could ever find it. 

  
  


When Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde-Harley is nine, she is sent to the head teacher’s office, not for the first time, after chopping another girl’s hair off with garden shears. She is smug when her mother is called to the school and doesn’t care which one. It’s Jade who arrives, and though she flattens her ears and tucks her tail in a mockery of shame, she is overjoyed to see her. This is not her first scolding, and it will not be her last. She has learned how to get what she wants.

Yiffy maps her family tree out in the dark in her dorm room while the other girls are asleep, lying and claiming to be doing homework. It’s a tangled, sprawling thing, more like a web than a tree, and it aches when she realizes she knows no-one on it but her mothers. She asks the other girls about theirs, frowns when they name not only mothers and fathers but uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents, second cousins, great-aunts, great-uncles. She has nothing, and they have everything, and it’s sickening.

When Yiffany is ten, history class starts to discuss the Creators. She bites back the urge to ask too-personal questions, to gulp down any knowledge of her family that she can. She’s supposed to be a secret, and she only barely knows why. It’s not until the teacher mentions Rose and Kanaya’s wedding that her stomach turns into a cold ball of lead and sinks into the floor. She doesn’t answer either of her mothers’ letters for at least a month after that, bitterly rebelling in the one small way she has. 

Yiffy watches from the play-yard swings as the other girls mingle with their parents on visiting day. Mothers, fathers, delighting in the achievements of their daughters, patting their little heads with proud smiles. She swings. Up, up, higher, higher. Her mothers can fly, after all, why would she be denied the privilege? If she can swing high enough, will she take off? Will her mothers appear, plucking her from the air like a little bird?

Yiffy is eleven years old the first time she learns she has a sister, even if Vriska is only half, and not even biologically. It’s through social media, because of course it is, and from there, she follows every one of Vriska’s other accounts. They’re very different. Vriska, as far as she can tell, has never so much as set foot in a boarding school. Vriska’s mothers are married to each other. Vriska has a wide, branching family, almost all of whom she’s met in person and posts pictures of on her accounts. 

She patches together a family photograph- one of Vriska’s, stolen from a social media post where she’d been mocking it, one old photograph from Dave and Jade’s wedding, herself, cut out from a class photo, delicately glued between the two, hiding the tape marks. It doesn’t fit in a regular picture frame, so she has to use one of the big ones and even then, she has to tilt it diagonally. Vriska’s photo is landscape format, but Dave and Jade’s is portrait, so it never quite fits, but she folds the corners and jams it between the backing and the glass anyways.

Twelve, now. She’s learned to play the flute, albeit poorly, and the school recital is well-attended. Neither of her mothers show up. She isn’t surprised by Rose’s absence, she knows Vriska had her own recital tonight, wouldn’t begrudge her sister the presence of family- but not even Jade is here. Her heart sinks even further when she sees the pictures of Vriska’s recital. Rose, Kanaya, John, Jade, Dave, Roxy- all in attendance. She knows she gave her mothers the tickets to hers, and their absence is more exhausting than heartbreaking this time.

The war is ramping up, not quite fever pitch yet, but the shadow of it on the horizon, and her mothers’ visits become more and more infrequent. She tries everything. Becomes top of her class, joins the football team, fights girls twice her size, breaks the hearts of everyone in her year. Runs away, once. It loses its appeal when no-one comes looking for her and she returns when a rainstorm is half-over, soaked to her bitter bones and trembling with rage or cold. She takes up smoking, but that one is just for her. A bad habit, one she can keep. Neither of her mothers smoke.

Thirteen. She studies the Creators excessively, barely sleeping, barely eating. She learns everything she can, everything her mothers don’t tell her. They tell her nothing but that they are proud of her, and that she is growing into a lovely young woman. She doesn’t know what they plan to do when she is no longer a child, can no longer be controlled or hidden. She thinks that day is coming soon, and is already afraid of what might come, and furious. She’s angry, so angry, and she wants to rip the world apart and scream at the pieces of its corpse.

Hair lies in a pool at her feet, and she thinks it would look like blood if it wasn’t shock-white, if the texture wasn’t so much like dog fur. Vriska has short hair. It falls in an elegant bob around her face, one streak of it dyed a pretty cerulean, and Yiffy can’t help but be disgusted at the haphazard chop job staring back at her from the mirror. The matron of her dormitory clucks her tongue (the noise it makes is sharper than a human’s would be; carapacians don’t produce saliva) and mutters about being able to fix it with a trip to the hairdresser’s, and what a shame, to lose so much lovely hair so quickly.

Fourteen. She starts going by just Y. Her name is acrid now, bitter on her tongue, and she’s as disgusted by the meaning (she learned it from one of the girls in the year above, ripped half her hair out and dragged bloody scratches down her face for the insult that came with the knowledge) as she is by the women who gave it to her. When one of her teachers calls her Yiffany, she stands on her desk and screams at the woman until her throat gives out. 

The winter uniforms are scratchy wool and she can’t stand the long skirts, the way they fall past her knees and restrict her movement. She doesn’t like the thermal tights she has to wear with them, doesn’t like that the school-provided earmuffs don’t fit, doesn’t like the way her cardigan bunches up at the hilt of her tail. Yiffy writes to her mothers, tells them as much. She doesn’t receive so much as a reply, only a notice that Jade will be delaying her winter visit, that Rose won’t be coming. She doesn’t know why she’d hoped.

Fifteen. She spends more time alone than ever, scrolling social media. She stalks her unsuspecting sister’s activity almost religiously, and sends her a few messages. Cruel. Vicious. She calls their shared mother a whore, tells Vriska she's a piece of shit, insults her ancestor’s memory. Harasses her, anonymously, until she deletes her account. It feels good, if only for a few moments. Then it just makes her feel sick.

Yiffy wins her school’s football match, one final kick across the goal posts. Her teammates whoop and cheer, leaping around the field with joy, waving to their parents in the crowd. She has learned better than to bother checking for hers, only staring at the ball where it lies defeated on the field. An exhausted sense of pride is her only reward, and she stares down at her victory with cold eyes, thinking idly about the party afterwards, where she’ll be surrounded by her teammates, or maybe just the quiet retreat into her dorms, door slamming shut behind her. She stalks off the field like a wolf denied its kill, hits the showers, changes, returns to the dormitories before anyone can catch her.

Sixteen, and Crocker’s drones come. She fights, but doesn’t stand a chance. Later, Jade and Rose will confess to her life with guilt, with excuses, with glib tongues and a sense of urgency. Her sister, her cousin and cousin-uncle all learn her name in one fell swoop. 

The story goes like this:

Not a word was said by anyone about the Lindworm; only the Queen thought about it now and then.

And the Lindworm watched from its tower, watched its sister grow into a beautiful Princess, watched its mother pretend it never existed, watched the sorceress go about her business, watched the world go on without it. 

But not a word was ever said by anyone, to anyone, about the Lindworm anymore.


End file.
